Seeing as this is a video game blog, and seeing as that we’re nearly nearing the end of the Naughties, I thought it would be a good idea to show everyone the entire time line of the video game history and how we got to the point of playing Modern Warfare 2. As this is the complete history of video games, I am going to start right at the very beginning. Alert this is geek central. read on and enjoy

1656 Korean War Veteran David Rosen recognizes growth of leisure income in Japanese marketplace and starts a small photo booth (and later amusement device company in Japan known as Rosen Enterprises Ltd.

1961 MIT student Steve Russell creates Spacewar, the first interactive computer game, on digital PDP-1 (Programmed Data Processor-1) mainframe computer. Limited by the computer technology of the time ASCII text characters were the “graphics” and people cold only play the game on a device that took up the floor space of a small house.

1962 Nolan Bushnell, later recognized as the father of the video game industry, enrolls in engineering school at the university of Utah, where he is first exposed to Spacewar. The game is still only available for play on million-dollar mainframes, which only large universities and corporations could afford.

1664 Rosen merges his company with Nihon Goraku

1966 Ralph Baer, an engineer working for a defense contractor, decides to find secondary use for television sets. He begins researching interactive television games.

Sega Enterprises Ltd release electronic shooting gallery game, its first arcade game (using no monitor) called the Periscope. Its success helped Sega work on a number of similar tittles in coming years.

1967 Baer’s television gadget adapted to play simple tennis game where two flat sticks bounce a square ball back and fourth on the screen. THIS IS NOT PONG; there is no English (twist/spin) put on the ball as it hits the flat sticks, so it just bounces back and fourth until someone misses.

1968 Nolan Bushnell graduates

1969 Nolan Bushnell moves to California after accepting a job at Ampex

1971 Magnavox purchases Baer’s television technology from Sanders Associates and begins developing the Odyssey, a TV plug-in device that will play the simple game.

Nolan Bushnell meanwhile turns his daughters bedroom into a workshop where he can build an arcade version of Spacewar. Because mainframe computers still cost too much to use as arcade machines, he develops a much-simplified version.

This was then to be turned into the world famous Atari. and with it the legend was born. PONG!! the worlds first true video game. Up next in this feature is the 1970’s where there was the first glimmer of a console war. Check back soon.